TODAY IN HISTORY

1824: The presidential election was turned over to the U.S. House of Representatives when a deadlock developed among John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay. (Adams ended up the winner.)

1862: President Abraham Lincoln sent his Second Annual Message to Congress, in which he called for the abolition of slavery, and went on to say, “Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves.”

1941: Japan’s Emperor Hirohito approved waging war against the United States, Britain and the Netherlands after his government rejected U.S. demands contained in the Hull Note.

1942: During World War II, nationwide gasoline rationing went into effect in the United States; the goal was not so much to save on gas, but to conserve rubber that was desperately needed for the war effort by reducing the use of tires.

1955: Rosa Parks, a Black seamstress, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus; the incident sparked a year-long boycott of the buses by Blacks.

1965: An airlift of refugees from Cuba to the United States began in which thousands of Cubans were allowed to leave their homeland.

1969: The U.S. government held its first draft lottery since World War II.

1973: David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, died in Tel Aviv at age 87.

1974: TWA Flight 514, a Washington-bound Boeing 727, crashed in Virginia after being diverted from National Airport to Dulles International Airport; all 92 people on board were killed. Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 6231, a Boeing 727, crashed near Stony Point, New York, with the loss of its three crew members (the plane had been chartered to pick up the Baltimore Colts football team in Buffalo, New York).

1990: British and French workers digging the Channel Tunnel between their countries finally met after knocking out a passage in a service tunnel.

1991: Ukrainians voted overwhelmingly for independence from the Soviet Union.

2005: A roadside bomb killed 10 U.S. Marines near Fallujah, Iraq.